Beneath Your Beautiful
by FirePheonix15
Summary: One-shot. After a particularly painful mission, the Doctor returns home devastated. Rose discovers a deeper side of him, and wants nothing more than to help him cope. Will the Doctor let her in?


**A/N: Wow, okay, I haven't posted in like forever! I went on vacation this Christmas, and didn't have access to a computer (well, I did, but my grandparents' PC is like 563846423 years old and the wifi is slow and idek how to use it cuz I'm an Apple gal). So I apologize for not being on. I expected to write a bunch of chapters of TF while I was gone, but I didn't write as much fanfic as I anticipated. I only have one more chapter of TF written! *gasp!* So I feel like I owe it to you guys to post this.**

**During the wee hours of the morning, I was scrolling through Instagram (as I often do at 2 AM) and a found a picture of Nine and Rose. That picture inspired this one-shot (credit to theninthdoctorlives on Instagram for the idea) and that picture is the cover of this. I hope you enjoy!**

**I want to give an enormous thanks to damitsharrypotter for being my beta on this fic. Starlight isn't in the DW fandom (STAR GET ON THAT!) and I thought it would be best to have a Whovian edit this one. damitsharrypotter has one of my most favorite accounts on Insta, and I look up to her so much omg. So when she responded to my PM and said she would edit this, I was soooo happy! So I just want to give a huge thanks to Sara. :)**

**Right, so, I present to you the fic.**

**~Summer**

**Beneath Your Beautiful**

The door of the TARDIS swung open and the Doctor stormed in. Rose hurried after him, panting. The Doctor furiously banged on some controls on the console, and soon they were flying again. His breaths came out irregularly as he set their course. Rose hovered nervously behind him. "Doctor-" He spun around to face her, and his cheeks were wet. His features were contorted into a pained expression.

"I'm a failure," he choked. "I couldn't... I failed, Rose."

She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. The Doctor had been called to a small planet in the outer rings of the universe; a distress signal, encrypted, had been delivered the day before, and the Doctor's sharp mind had almost immediately deciphered it. They had rushed to the planet, only to discover a plot to destroy it. The people living on that planet had been invaded by an alien race called Delorians, and the invaders grew tired of the planet. Using their specially designed technology, the Delorians positioned a laser to eradicate the world...

He had done everything in his power, but it wasn't enough. Even the Doctor wasn't able to save all those people, all those families, all of that culture, all of that history and future. The planet had been reduced to nothing but ash in a powerful explosion. At the final moment, Rose had managed to get the Doctor inside the TARDIS, where they had ridden the concussion to the nearest planet to refuel. Now, it was clear that the ninth incarnation of the Doctor had taken the death of the planet to heart.

Rose sighed. "Please, Doctor, don't-"

He shrugged away from her, and screamed in frustration. Frozen, Rose stood behind him, trying her best to steer clear of the devastated Doctor. He stomped over to the other side of the ship and grabbed something that Rose couldn't exactly see and threw it across the room. It hit the wall, hard, and shattered into a thousand little pieces. She wondered how many times the Doctor's own heart had shattered like that, into a million minuscule shards that could never quite be put back together. He ran his fingers through his little tuft of brown hair, his jaw set into an almost growl. Rose was terrified by this new side of him. She'd never seen him like this, and she realized for the first time that there were stronger, darker emotions inhabiting her friend. She wanted, more than anything, to take him into her arms and tell him that it was okay, that they were okay, and to let him take comfort in her. But she still couldn't predict the Doctor's actions, and so she decided it would be best to stand back and let him get it all out of his system.

He screamed again and swung his arms, damaging parts of the TARDIS. Rose prayed that they weren't vital parts. Buttons and pieces of metal littered the floor, but the Doctor didn't even seem to notice as he stepped over them. He was moving towards the other rooms on the ship, and Rose followed him. He entered a room off the corridor, a room that Rose had never been into before. She froze when she realized what the room was. Every inch of the walls were filled with old pages, obviously torn out of journals, all of them covered in a messy handwriting. A small bed was the only piece of furniture in the room. The floor was littered with crumpled notes, and some pages were stuck on bulletin boards, others taped to the walls, others just tucked under each other. Dates and maps and diagrams accompanied the journal entries, and it took Rose seconds of skimming through all of the articles to understand.

They were mission logs. Each journal entry was dated at the top of the page, complete with a retelling of the day's adventures.

_"September third, two-thousand and five: _

_My life has been changed forever. I found another companion. She's... Oh, she's absolutely fantastic. I am so glad I met her, and... Oh, I'm rambling again. Very well._

_ The Nesting Consciousness had gone to Earth. It was turning every single piece of plastic on the planet (try saying that ten times fast!) alive and against humanity. It was shop window dummies first, and luckily I shut it down before it spread to everything. I was in a little shop, in the middle of London, and I was tracking the dummies, and there was this girl. I heard her scream, and if it weren't for me she'd be dead. Story of my life, eh? I grabbed her hand and got her out, just before the building went boom. I didn't think I'd see her again, but there was something, something about her... And I had to. It was like she was gravity, and I was a small little planet and me, along with the whole universe, orbits around her and I couldn't stay away, 'cause she was my gravity, and I still can't stay away."_

Rose didn't bother with the rest of the entry; she was almost in tears. She didn't think the Doctor could be so sweet and poetic. Apparently, there were a lot of sides to him she didn't know. And now, she realized, that each of those journal pages were missions that were successful... The Doctor carried the weight of the world—the _universe_- on his shoulder, and if he dropped a bit of it, a planet or a star, he felt like he failed. That's what happened tonight. The Doctor, still in all his rage, walked to the bed in the middle of the room and tugged the sheets off. He screamed again, punching the mattress. If the situation wasn't so dismal, Rose would have laughed. The sight was almost, _almost_ comical. The Doctor broke into a run and rammed into a wall.

Rose gasped. "Doctor! Oh my god, stop!" Hundreds of pages rained from the sky, all over him, revealing a small window. Rose was a little surprised. She never thought that there could be windows in a time machine. But they were currently in the time vortex, and the vortex cast a whole host of colours; reds and blues and violets filtered in through the window, and it was one of the most beautiful things Rose had ever seen. It was like sunlight, in the early morning, shimmering through your window, but colourful.

The light reflected off the Doctor's face, illuminating the tears that were streaming down his cheeks. Rose stepped forward and reached for him. He collapsed onto the bed, sitting on the edge, his head in his hands. She could hear his strangled sobs, and the sound was heart wrenching. Gently, she sat down beside him and gingerly placed her hand on his shoulder. She could feel his shoulders shaking violently, his chest racking from the sobs.

"Hey," she cooed, "Hey, it's alright. Everything's okay-" "But it's not, Rose." He wailed. "It's not okay. Not for those people. Not for all those people who died today. I could've saved them, if I had done things differently, but I didn't. I failed them. All those mothers who don't have daughters and daughters who don't have fathers and fathers who don't have brothers and nobody's left. Everybody died, Rose. That planet, all those people, an entire species. All of their past and their future, gone. In less than seconds, everything gone and everybody dead. And I couldn't save them."

He was lost again, in uncontrollable shaking and sobbing.

"Doctor, listen, this wasn't your fault. Some things are fixed in time; some things are meant to happen. Maybe this is one of them-"

"But I couldn't save them! I failed, just like last time..." He trailed off, hanging his head in shame.

"Oh, god. Oh, _Doctor_, oh, my poor Doctor!" Rose exclaimed. "This isn't about today, this is about forever ago. This is about the Time War, the same thing happened to your people-" Rose stared, wide eyed. "Oh my god," she whispered. The Doctor looked up at her, his eyes shining. "I'm sorry, Rose. I'm so so sorry. You shouldn't have had to see me like that."

Rose fit her head into the crook of his neck, and was surprised at how well she fit. He put one of his arms around her and pulled her close to him, his warmth enveloping her and, although she wasn't the one vulnerable and crying, she took comfort in him. She took in his scent, like ashes and cinnamon. Exhaustion overwhelmed her in that moment, and her eyelids drooped. She whispered, barely audible, "If no one wants to look at you for what you really are, I will be here still."

As she drifted into sleep, she felt the Doctor stir and then she felt lips on hers, and her eyelids were so heavy, but the Doctor was so warm, and so she kissed him back, but her body was shutting down, and he was exhausted too, and he pulled away and smiled at her just before they both fell asleep.

And Rose realized, however horrible it may be, that she would destroy thousands of planets and galaxies just for the chance to keep him, her Doctor. That he was someone she couldn't ever live without, someone whom she never wanted to go away.

'Cause, after all, he was her gravity.


End file.
